In Other Words

A short day at the clinic today, which has such an effect on me that the relief is palpable every Tuesday night, the same way dread is palpable every Sunday evening at the prospect of the weekend coming to an end.

I love short days, and thankfully I get off at 2 every Wednesday and Friday. It makes the longer days, working from 11-7 or 9-6, much more bearable. A week of those days would likely do me in. Such a delicate flower, me. It’s not even so much the actual work or hours as the endless people pleasing.

When I’m working on proofing a book, short days at the clinic means more time to don my robe of academia (sounds like a magic article of clothing in a role-playing game, doesn’t it?) and thinking cap and, red pencil and eraser in hand, launch myself into the personal race to meet the deadline. Tonight, as I did this, setting aside the chapters that were my goal for the evening from the rest of the book, I once again wondered why, considering how much I don’t enjoy the material, considering the endless struggle to stay focused for more than one paragraph, considering the cursing and the pity parties I throw because I have no free time and it’s seemingly all up to me to keep us afloat (the antics, of course, of a control freak: it’s always all about me), considering all of this and more angst for over 6 years, I once again wondered why, as I was saying, I am still a freelance editor.

But I blocked the question from getting answered, since it would require wasting time, and since I’ve been wondering this for a few years and have not yet come up with the truth, and got back to proofing chapters on unions and equity and women in the workplace. Finding the last chapter of the day particularly clean and easy to read, considering the topic, and realizing that not working in my office and in front of my laptop leads to more productive work, I finished exactly one minute shy of my goal of 9:00 pm, after which I’d planned to settle down with my current novel, Nino Ricci’s The Origin of Species (which I’m very much enjoying during what little time I can eke out here and there, say, on the toilet, brushing my teeth, the few minutes before C comes to bed).

Glass of water, check. Treasured, lovely-looking, wonderful-smelling novel, check. Faux-fur blanket, check. I settled into my chair in my wee and cozy library and got down to it for maybe one minute before I decided to read in the bath.

Which leads me to the title of this post. There’s something about a bathroom that makes it oddly conducive to answering long-standing questions or experiencing epiphanies of epic proportions. In the bathroom, one ruminates on the everyday questions of what one should do with a relationship in trouble, how one should decline an invitation to a neighbour’s dinner one has no desire whatsoever to attend, what one should say to his or her boss in asking for a raise, what one should write for their paper/novel/dissertation/article, etc. In the bathroom, one ruminates on philosophic questions such as the meaning of life, or why one conducts oneself the way one does, or why, for instance, one might continue to do something one has long ago decided one does not like.

It was in the bathtub I asked myself the question once again as to why I still freelance. Why have I decidedly asserted several times over the past years that I will no longer accept books but then still accepted them as they were offered to me? Why do I continue to hold on to the task when it poses such problems, causes such misery? My answers over time have been that I can’t refuse a book because of money, because I don’t want to disappoint my clients, because I cling to the idea of having a backup for work, sort of like a security blankie, because I worked hard to get where I am with my clients, and because I simply can’t say no. I think there is some truth to all of these answers, even if the third one, the backup for work, seems unfounded (I’ve never wanted for a job).

Yet this evening, as I read my novel and savoured the writing and became conscious of how much I adore being a part of this world even if only as a reader and educated English student and informal book critic, a new answer came to me. I came across an error in the book and thought about the copyeditor and the proofreader and then about how fantastic it would be to edit or proof the novels of authors I greatly admire. I pictured myself working at Random House, and taking pride in that, in being a part of that collective publishing world.

Eureka! Yes, I suddenly had the answer to why I have been unable to stick to my decision (the one I’ve made at least a dozen times) to quit editing. I think it’s because I think highly of this line of work. It has some prestige to it. It has some romance, some glamour to it. I take pride in it. More than that, I feel it links me to the world of which I’ve always longed to be an intrinsic part, of which I feel I am an intrinsic part, by my very nature. That is to say, working on books in this way, even if on academic subjects I have no interest in, being a part in some way of producing a book, makes me feel as though I’m doing something relevant to me. I’m somewhat being true to me, even in a roundabout smallish way — as opposed to editing Governor General Award-winning fiction, say.

This feels like truth to me, though it doesn’t actually free me to quit being a freelance editor. I have to admit, if my friend who’s the managing editor at UOP asked me to edit a book on a literary symposium, for instance, I’d have a difficult time saying no.

So I’ve figured out why, mainly, I can’t say no to these jobs. The next question for the bathtub, then, since I’m pretty sure I need to stop editing academic books, is, how do I get past that to finally let go of the job? How do I free myself?